You just have your friends with you, so you play and you fight. “Riding this track is one of the best things you can do on a motorcycle. “Racing here is a lot more fun than MotoGP,” beams Rossi, lord of all he surveys at the ranch. Rossi was unhappy that MotoGP had been taken over by Spanish riders and teams, so he wanted to revive his nation’s fortunes, while having a blast at the same time. With Simoncelli gone, Rossi needed riders to train with, so the construction of the VR46 Motor Ranch was followed by the establishment of the VR46 Riders Academy, which would fill the void left by his friend and also nurture young Italian talent.
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Life can be cruel and it’s incredible what fate can give you.” A year or two later Valentino said, okay, let’s build something great. “They were like brothers, so after Marco died there was something missing. “Vale and Marco were together all the time – training and having fun – because Marco was the only guy who could stay with Vale on a bike,” says Albi Tebaldi, a childhood friend of Rossi’s and now CEO of the VR46 empire. His death affected Rossi hugely and transformed his life. The 2008 250cc world champion lost his life when he fell during the 2011 Malaysian Grand Prix at Sepang and was struck by Rossi and American Colin Edwards. They imagined the layout that gradually came to fruition: 13 corners across 2.4km of a painstakingly laid circuit, with concrete foundations topped with limestone and sand to create the perfect surface for practicing your sideways skills.īut a year later Simoncelli was dead. Rossi made his first visit to the ranch site in the autumn of 2010, with best friend Marco Simoncelli and Mattia Pasini, another local Grand Prix winner. When he was a kid he spent his weekends blasting around a gravel quarry a few miles further out of town, but the quarry was chaotic, with broken-down diggers abandoned here and there, waiting to smash you to a pulp if you got it wrong. Rossi created his VR46 Motor Ranch because he needed somewhere to ride every day to keep his skills sharp. Thanks, mate.Ĭynics might dismiss this creation as nothing more than the plaything of a multi-millionaire petrol-head, but in fact it’s much more than that. And there is the man himself, racing his mates, kicking down a couple of gears, throwing his YZF450 sideways into a corner and filling your face with sand. Out of the forest and before you stands an epic dirt-track circuit that twists and turns across the hillside. Take the south-east road out of town, towards the war memorial that marks the Allied breakthrough of the Nazis’ Gothic Line in 1944, then turn left, down a steep single-track road that drops down into a valley through half a dozen tree-lined hairpin turns.
![valentino rossi ranch 100km dirt bike valentino rossi ranch 100km dirt bike](https://photos.motogp.com/2019/12/02/lg6_3855.small.jpg)
The speed limit is 46km/h instead of 50, and the town square – flanked by his pizzeria, gelateria, merchandise shop and bar – is basically a shrine to the 115 Grands Prix and nine world titles he has won across the globe.īut it gets better than that. Pretty much every tree, light pole and window flies a VR46 flag. Tavullia has been Rossi Town for a couple of decades. 15 November 2019 / Text Size (-) (+) / Printĭeep in the Italian countryside Valentino Rossi is building an Italian renaissance in MotoGP, while having one hell of a blast at the same time